Microsoft pushes back Office 2008 for Mac until January

The last major software package to go Intel-native on the Mac is being pushed …

It looks like Mac users will have to wait a little bit longer to get their mitts on the next version of Office. Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) has just announced that Office 2008 for the Mac will miss its fall shipping target. Instead, the group has moved the RTM date of Office 2008 to December and says that the next target date for availability will be in January in time for the Macworld Expo.

What's the reason for the push? The Mac BU's new general manager, Craig Eisler, said that when he came aboard about six weeks ago, the group was going through its standard quality checkpoint and discovered that there were just too many things left to do before getting Office out the door. "There was no one thing that caused the push—it was more of a perfect storm," Eisler told Ars yesterday. "The switch to Intel processors, the switch to different tools in the development stream, the switch in formats with Office—all of it presented different roadblocks for the team, and we wanted to make sure we could address all of those issues."

The Mac BU has continually maintained that it always launches the Mac versions of Microsoft software 6 or so months after the release of its Windows equivalent. However, the new targeted availability will mark almost 12 months after the launch of Office 2007 for Windows (January 30, 2007), which is sure to irritate more than a few Mac Office users who have been waiting on a new version of the software for years now.

They'll be irritated for good reason—Office for Mac is last major software package for the Mac to go Universal Binary. The push not only means that Mac users will have to wait until January to get an Intel-native version of the software, it also means that they will be forced to continue using file converters if they want to open documents created by Office 2007 for Windows. We certainly don't envy those in an office setting who have to share documents with their Office 2007-using counterparts right now, that's for sure.

Eisler said that the company will release more details about the product as it gets closer to launch. Office 2008 is currently in a closed beta and does not currently have a public beta scheduled.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui